I got a dose of good news last week – Starting in August, I get to work from home another day each week, and Lewis gets to be home with me. Wednesdays and Fridays we’ll be home together!

I’m very excited about this change for a number of reasons:

1. Lewis is the greatest sidekick of all time
2. Not paying for daycare on Wednesdays saves us $218/month!!!
3. I will not be eating out or commuting on Wednesdays, which saves an additional unknown sum of money each month (maybe $40?).

Another exciting daycare change is that Lewis will be moving up to Wobblers a month earlier than they initially planned. A spot has unexpectedly opened up, and Lewis will take it. I think he will thrive in there, where the environment and activities are more age appropriate. Additionally, they will finally be providing food for him in that classroom, which means I don’t have to schlep things back and forth or spend 15 minutes each morning pouring milk and packing lunch/snacks for kiddo. BONUS: that means 3 days a week where food is covered. AKA we don’t have to pay for it. We’ll save money there too!

All of this money saving with daycare/food/commuting costs combined with the money we’re saving through refinancing (rate locked this weekend! YAY!) means that we’ll be feeling a lot of relief financially. I redid our budget-forecast through December 2017, and things are looking much brighter.

Unfortunately, they’re not so bright that we’ll be able to have a second kid when we want to. But they’re bright enough that we can see the kid at the end of the tunnel. Before these financial changes, we felt hopeless for growing our family. But now hope has returned, and where there is hope, there are happy people.

We’re the happy people, in case that wasn’t clear.